The present disclosure relates to a product sales processing system, and particularly to a product sales processing system that allows a customer in a store to read a product code using a predetermined terminal and make payment using that terminal.
In retail outlets such as supermarkets and the like, apparatuses (known as cash registers) such as POS (point of sale) cash registers are used for the registering and payment of products purchased by customers. POS cash registers are normally operated by a store clerk, and the store clerk reads a barcode provided to a product using a barcode scanner which is connected to (or incorporated in) the POS cash register, and is thus able to perform the tasks of registering and payment.
Moreover, in recent years, product sales processing systems known as self scanning systems have been proposed (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication (JP-A) No. 63-245594). These systems have made it possible, as a result of customers who are visiting a store being able to read barcodes themselves, to avoid the crowds that are generated when a large number of customers are queuing in front of a cash register during store busy periods, and thereby alleviate the work load on store clerks.
According to JP-A No. 63-245594, the system is formed by a product sales data processing apparatus main unit which corresponds to a POS cash register, and by a portable terminal device which is a device used by a customer in a store to read a bar code in place of the bar code scanner used by a store clerk. This portable terminal device is able to be removably attached to the product sales data processing apparatus main unit, and is passed to a customer when they enter the store. Using this portable terminal device, for example, a customer takes down an item they wish to buy from a product display shelf and reads the barcode thereof. The data from the read barcode is stored in the memory inside the portable terminal device. The customer then takes the portable terminal device to the product sales data processing apparatus main unit (i.e., the cash register), and the portable terminal device is connected to the cash register. When the portable terminal device is connected to the cash register, the data of the purchased product which is stored in memory is transferred from the portable terminal device to the product sales data processing apparatus main unit. Consequently, processing such as the registering of the product, payment, and receipt issuance and the like are performed in the product sales data processing apparatus main unit.
However, cash registers of systems in which a store clerk operates the cash register which have already been introduced into retail outlets and are currently in use are not normally designed so as to be connection compatible with the above described type of portable terminal device. As a result, in the above described conventional self scanning systems, both the product sales data processing apparatus main body and the portable terminal devices have had to be made specifically for a self scanning systems. Because of this, in order to introduce a self scanning system, a retail outlet side has had to totally replace the entire system, even going as far as having to replace the cash registers that they had been using in their established system with cash registers (i.e., product sales data processing apparatus main units) of the new self scanning system. Because of such necessities, the problem has existed that introducing a self scanning system has proved extremely costly.
Furthermore, in the method according JP-A No. 63-245594, a customer reads barcodes of the products they want to buy. Consequently, it is necessary for a store clerk to check whether or not the product sales data generated based on the barcodes read by the customer matches up with the actually purchased products. As a method for this check, the clerk compares a list of the product sales data displayed on a display apparatus such as a display section with the purchased products to determine whether or not the two match up. Alternatively, instead of checking whether or not all the purchased products match up with the sales product data, the store clerk makes a check only of a part of the purchased products, namely, important products such as expensive products in order to reduce labor and time for the check. However, this poses a problem that it is hard to find important products from a list of the product sales data because the product sales data is displayed in the order in which the customer read the barcodes of the products.
Furthermore, in a method of checking whether or not the number of the purchased products included in the product sales data matches up with that of the actually purchased products when a store clerk checks whether or not the product sales data is not different from the actually purchased products, the problem has existed that it is not possible to determine whether or not product(s) different in price are included even though the two numbers are the same, and hence it is not possible to check a difference in price. For example, even if the number of the purchased products included in the product sales data matches up with that of the purchased products in the shopping basket, wrong amount of money will be charged at the time of payment when the product(s) in the shopping basket are different from the product(s) represented by the product sales data.